Are you a cork guy as well? You do know that screw caps are far superior closures for wine, don't you
I prefer corks. Because I enjoy opening wine bottles with corks. I can't tell the difference in the wine unless its actually spoiled. I know screw caps are better seals but its not as much fun.
(as cans are over bottles for beer,
And I prefer bottles too. Because i like the sensation of a cold bottle on my lips more than a cold can.
Just as I prefer like drinking anything from a glass or mug over drinking it from a plastic or paper or metal cup (whether its water, juice, milk, tea, or coffee...)
I would LOVE to see wine in cans
I'm sure that'd be fine in terms of taste as I'd still drink it out of a glass.
Dining is very much about the taste, but you shouldn't discount the value in the pageantry, theater, and traditions of the experience. They may not affect the taste, but they are still part of the whole experience.
Possibly. Friendly fire was already pointed out by someone else. And I think friendly fire would very likely have counted towards this total.
But its not as clear to me whether deliberate suicides would have been included in the total or not. After all, if I count all the incidents where police were charged with assault its similarly not clear that it would include domestic spousal abuse incidents at home, off duty, not acting in anyway in the capacity of police officers. Maybe it would? Maybe it wouldn't... but you'd want some documentation one way or the way. Same goes here I think. Suicides are quite different than being shot to death in the line of duty or even off duty.
So find a better breakdown or documentation of the numbers if you can to establish just what was counted and how, or just halve it -- that's what the other poster did. It doesn't really change the argument significantly in the end whether its 51, or 26.
Doesn't Windows use a swap file, no matter how much memory you have? That could conceivably see any amount of traffick per day.
Far less than you'd think in nearly all circumstances.
And its not like the computer writes to the same physical SSD sectors over and over again on an SSD, even if its over-writing data in the same page file. The wear leveling abstraction between file system and physical disk ensure that writes take place on least used sectors and then the file system is told the file is now using the new sectors and the old ones are marked free.
In other words if you have a 4Kb file that you just overwrite continually, each write will still be on a new physical sector instead of writing on the same sector repeatedly.
Can you clarify that... are you saying that the battery actually cannot be replaced even by a phone service center?
I've read the M8 reviews, and i always got the sense that it was as 'non-removable as an iphone battery' in that you weren't going to carry around batteries and swap them at will, but if the battery died or degraded to where it only held a nominal charge you could take it somewhere and have it replaced with a new one.
We seem to be using different definitions of intrinsic value.
Your use seem to be based on the specialized jargon definition used in finance applied to stocks etc?
I am using the definition of intrinsic from philosophy and economic theory, and which is the usual use in common english.
As in the first definition in the dictionary of intrinsic is: "belonging to a thing by its very nature"
By this definition stocks have little intrinsic value. As electronic records in a database somewhere they have absolutely none. As printed share certificates they burn well and can be used as toilet paper.
A gold watch that tells time really well on the other hand can tell time really well. Its also gold, which is a conductor.
men with guns can take those things, were it not for the rule of law protecting property rights.
a) So? That has no bearing on intrinsic value.
b) That's a gross oversimplification. Men with guns can take things despite the rule of law (we call them theives, robbers, pirates...) and there are plenty of ways to stop men with guns from taking your stuff without resorting "rule of law" from having your own guns to simply staying out of range.
None is more or less intrinsic simply because ownership is a matter of custom
Intrinisc value has nothing to do with ownership. Instrinsc value "belongs to the nature of the thing". The watch tells really good time regardless of who owns it or even if its shared or nobody owns it at all. The stocks on the other hand are a worthless idea without convention and custom and the force of law to give them value. That is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic in a nutshell.
Balancing that would be that there are multiple cases of cops shooting each other
Good point.
But I figure that 5-10% is a good percentage, and it's not that big of a range.
That's fair.
Do you have some citation on the reliability figure? I thought the false-negative* was higher.
There are a number of competing systems. I don't know. I guess the point is that if we set a low target like 1:1000 (99.9%) its amost surely a net positive. If we set a target like 1:5000 (99.98%) its beyond clear reproach that its a net positive. If the guns are currently only 99% reliable... or something absurdly terrible like that then I agree they aren't ready for primetime -- but that's not an indictment of the idea of smart guns, merely the current status of the implementation.
Personally, I looked at the cost - the system seems to cost $1k over a non-smart gun.
And that's another good point. Clearly the cost needs to come down for it to be practical. But the anti-smart-gun crowd tends to frame their objection around how its automatically going lead to more innocent deaths. I'm aiming to shred that argument, but I have no issue conceding that price is valid concern.
If you figure the average police firearm lasts 20 years, that's $50M/year to save 5-10 lives.
The above said, that seems surprisingly reasonable to be honest. 50 million year divided over how many police officers? Google is suggesting that its around 780,000. That's $64 per year per officer to save at least 5-10 lives year.* I don't know if that is 'high' or not relative to other measures that are in place relative their expense but its not as bad I thought it would be.
* That only considers officer deaths. How many civilians are shot with stolen police weapons? How many of those would be eliminated with a smart system? In some cases the thief would and could defeat the system... but surely in some cases not.
I'd also like to wind out by saying one concern i have about this particular smart gun tech highlighted in the TFA is that it appears to be a wireless link between wristband and weapon -- and I'm concerned about the ability for it to be jammed. If it can be effectively jammed then its not suitable at all for the police. (Although it may still be entirely reasonable for a hobby weapon or hunting weapon.)
However, without the force of law to back such property ownership, we're left only with what we have the weapons to protect.
My only argument was the "stocks" have no intrinsic value.
Thus the bunker-builders talking about ammunition-based currency.
Ammunition has intrinic value,and would be valuable in a post-civilization universe, but ammo itself makes a poor currency. It doesn't really handle well. Would you really want to load your gun to defend your bunker with ammo that spent the last several months (years?) being passed around from person to person, dropped in the mud, wiped off, counted and recounted, and moved from pocket to pocket? Or would you want pristine stuff new out of a box?
Ammo would be valuable in a barter system economy to be sure... but so would chickens and gasoline. But none of these is good as a currency.
Phones are slowing as well, Short of me breaking it or the battery dying, I can easily see my HTC ONE M8 lasting 4 years. It's probably why HTC made sure the battery was not replaceable in the phone... to ensure it will stop working.
It cost me about the same to pay someone to replace the battery in my old iphone 3GS for my daughter to use as I paid for a replacement battery for my old Motorola RAZR.
The battery my not be "swappable", but it IS "replaceable".
Frankly that sounds like the creationist argument for "equal time" in the science classroom.
Would you prefer classroom time allocated according to whoever had the most money to spend on setting the curriculum instead? Nutrition 101 brought to you by the High Fructose Corn Syrup Consortium, Math? What math, it's been replaced by Harry Potter Appreciation class.;)
Trouble is, when you set everybody at the same volume, you get a crap ton of noise and garbage.
I agree the average political viewpoint is worthless. But the wealthiest persons political viewpoint is no more likely to be worthwhile than anyone elses.
Better for ideas that resonate with the people to percolate to the top organically rather than just get shouted into us by the richest.
However, a well-maintained modern handgun firing factory ammunition is unlikely to fail
So assuming you maintain it, which you already claimed you do, you should be just fine as it will continue to be unlikely to fail.
What we're talking about here is an additional failure mode
How is the potential of getting shot with your own gun not also a "failure mode"? Where you simply see "additional failure mode", I see tradeoffs plain as day.
If for some reason you need to shoot with your off hand and cannot get your strong-side wrist in range of the gun, you'll be unable to shoot.
If for some reason the person you wish to shoot wrestles the gun away from you, he'll be unable to shoot you with it. Tradeoff.
Police will absolutely refuse to use these,
Lets look at some actual numbers. According to the Washington Post
From 2000 to 2010
511 police officers were killed by guns. ---- 170 the source of the gun is not known / gun not recovered 107 of those were by guns legally acquired by the killer 77 were from stolen guns 51 were killed with their own weapon or another officers weapon (presumably obtained during the incident) 46 obtained from relatives or friends who had them legally 41 obtained through illegal street sale 16 obtained through 'staw buyer' (bought legally by someone for someone else prohibted to own a gun) 3 purchased illegally at gun shows or private sellers
So a full 10% of police deaths by firearm were by their own guns. This system would have saved at minimum 51 police officers lives. Its plausible that some percentage of the stolen and other illegally obtained guns would also have been prevented; but we'll set that aside and just consider police officers being shot with their own firearm for now.
So the question before us then is how many times would a smart system have to fail to fire before it caused more deaths than it saved?
The number of bullets fired by Officers in New York City was 431 in 2001, and 540 in in 2006. (And peaked quite a bit higher in the 90s, but I'm trying to keep the data as current as possible.) Now Given NYC is 1/40th the US population we can make a very gross extrapolation to the entire country to 17,000 - 21,000 shots year. Lets call it 200,000 rounds over the same decade. (And I think that's crazy high over estimate); and it includes everything from putting down a dog to warning shots to that time LAPD shot a single 19 year old guy 90 times after he threatened them with a cell phone. (Yes he was trying to provoke them and he deserved to get shot... but really 90 rounds fired at what turned out to be an unarmed man?)
Anyway based on those numbers a smart gun system then would have to fail >50 times in 200,000 rounds (or 1 round out of 4000) and EVERY single failure would have to be a life or death situation where failing to fire leads to the officers death, which is so utterly ludicrous its not even really worth considering... but lets consider it anyway. 1:4000 failures is 99.975% functional.
That's how reliable the system has to be to be an improvement, even under the most RIDICULOUS assumption that every single failure would lead to a cop being killed. But even 99.975% reliable is a very low bar to reach.
Not only will the system clearly be more reliable than that, and even when it does fail most of the time it won't get anyone killed.
If it were to be even 99.99% reliable, and we assume that even 1 time in 10 the gun not firing is fatal for the police officer, then this system would have saved 51 officers, and resulted in 2 deaths./. is a place for science and math. And the math is pretty clear. The system will save far more lives than it costs. And your objection is therefore knee jerk hysterics.
I look forward to a well reasoned, well researched, well articulated counter argument. (Or just call me a liberal tard who wants to take all yer guns away...whatever works for you).
Except users never had to buy iDevice in the first place, which makes your Walmart analogy inept.
People never have to move to New York either. The walmart analogy seems reasonable to me.
Apple's policy regarding apps is well-known.
Not really. Or perhaps its known but not well understood.
People are on the gog and steam forums asking for ios shopping apps, with no conception of why it will not happen despite owning an idevice and thinking they understand the policy.
Or people will ask on humblebundle.com for future mobile bundles to include the ios version of the game alongside the pc, mac, linux, and android version; again not realizing that humblebundle simply cannot do this.
People understand they can't just go willy nilly downloading apps for ios... but they are largely not aware of the full implications of how locked in they are.
Sure, Apple has more tightfisted control.
Thank you.
But both Valve and Apple are gatekeepers to a large userbase, and they both take 30%.
That's fair. But the difference in how tightfisted the control is can't be just brushed aside. It affects the real impact of the policies.
. That was the basic principle being argued over initially before this topic became faceted into just how Evil(TM) Apple really is. That one has control over a device and one is just a dominant "store" (that also hosts achievements, "cloud" saves, and matchmaking) for PC gaming doesn't make that principle go away.
Even if the policies in the two stores are the same. the freedom to step outside the store and use a different one at-will with the same device changes the real world impact of the policies inside the store immensely.
I think we've exhausted this topic, so last reply for me.
Agreed. I don't think there is much new left to argue.
"At FRANK, youâ(TM)ll be seated around our massive communal table of century-old reclaimed wood, surrounded by new friends who share your love for fresh, local food and the fellowship and storytelling that naturally spring from the dinner party setting. "
" FRANK generally takes place within 10 minutes of downtown Dallas (normally accessible by public transit) at a private home in a comfortable, casual, informal space."
Adding more tables would a) defeat the dinner party gimmick. b) probably not fit in the average private home
What do you think of replacing the stereotypical front yard with some type of garden and some home raising of animals (chickens come to mind)?
I seem to recall reading that a potential drawback of this would be the difficulty in containing the spread disease. Thousands of 'farms' just a few 10s of feet from the next one over, each managed by a total amateur during evenings and weekends who already has a real day job.
Writing this I think the article I specifically read was in reference to running bee hives, but it seems that the issues would apply here as well.
What do you do if your neighbors chickens start getting sick...and they aren't swift enough to address the problem... hell even if they are swift its probably too late.
I'm nowhere near a farmer,
Exactly. To turn this into an IT analogy it would be like proposing each home run their own mail servers. In theory this would be good for a lot of reasons... but most people aren't server admins; and dealing with spam, viruses, server updates, relay issues, security, etc, etc is just setting things up to fail. A chicken coop in every front yard is a biological (biohazard) equivalent.
It would often get flooded like a status LED blinking so fast it looks always on.
After you watch those logs flood by for a while, sure you don't keep up, and read every line, but you can extract information just in the way it flows or isn't flowing. And when it pauses and you are waiting for something its usually something interesting, because you wern't expecting it to pause just then.
"If Android tablet sales are so far ahead, why are Android tablet use figures so far behind?"
Methodology? I mean, I read the article you linked to:
"For the hourly usage figures, Chitika Insights sampled tens of millions of U.S. and Canadian tablet online ad impressions running through the Chitika Ad Network."
My android is running firefox with adblock...and honestly even then i don't use it much for browsing the web. I spend most of my time in apps.
I had to think about it, but yeah it was. Crystal Skull was stupid as rocks and a stain on the franchise.
But all 3 star wars prequels were much worse.
Crystal Skull would have been worse only if one of the aliens had been Indy's mom, and indy's kid was half alien and the key to letting the aliens go home, using the force to fly a bicycle. Oh and Indy's kid would have married Marion and had a baby jedi.
With all respect, it didn't really have other uses anymore,
Thats sort of buying a van, and then having the dealer gradually remove all the doors and windows from a van and then declaring that you don't need all that cargo space either because it doesn't have any uses since you can't get to it, and then removing the removing the space too leaving you with a nice little 2 seater smart car.
But the whole reason I bought this car in the first place is because I wanted a VAN. Doors, windows, cargo space.
There are a LOT of things you could do with a status bar. You could display status... like WHAT THE FUCK IS THE BROWSER IS DOING RIGHT NOW now aka "STATUS"? I mean sure there is a spinning green circle in the tab icon space and that's all we get for feedback?
Download speed, how many items are in the download manager queue, dns look ups, time outs, server errors, do I have internet access, page validation status, plugins starting up, encryption characteristics, extensions / addon messages, what is it doing with cookies... I can imagine more things to do with the status bar then will FIT in 5 status bars. Do I want or need all of those all the time? Hell no... but I'm using firefox because I want more advanced feedback than a spinning circle.
Except you haven't shown Apple to be a monopoly. You don't have to buy an iPhone to get smartphone service. You don't have to buy an iPad to get a tablet computer.
Complete control over what people do with their idevice is monopolistic. If walmart was the only store you were allowed to shop at if you lived in New York then walmart has a monopoly there. The fact that you don't have to live in New York, and can shop somewhere else if you first moved to a new city doesn't change that fact. Likewise, being able to abandon your idevice and buy a whole new device doesn't change the fact that Apple's practice of control over idevices is monopolistic.
They have a "monopoly" on the users that bought their iDevice, just like Valve does on users who only buy games through Steam.
That is a ridiculous comparison. Those two aren't just like eachother at all. What do steam and apple have control over? Steam Answer: The contents of your steam account and the steam store. That's it.
Apple Answer: The contents of your apple account and the apple app store. AND you are prevented from obtaining software for your idevice anywhere else. AND you are prevented from using software you acquire on non-idevices.
What do I have to do if I'm using $provider$ and now want to buy a program somewhere else for my $device that I own$?
Steam Answer: Buy a program from another store that supports $device that you own$. There are MANY to choose from. Regardless of what steam supported device you currently have. You are free to shop elsewhere for it.
Apple Answer: First buy another device. Now you can visit another store. Note that no matter what device you buy, you will not be able to use any of your apple app store purchases on it.
That, my dense friend, is the difference between apple's WALLED garden and valves garden. Steam only controls the stuff in the store. Apple controls the stuff in its store, but also prevents you from using another store. (And NO, being able to use another store by buying an entirely new device doesn't change that fact.)
So what's your argument? That having control over what is on your steam account inside the steam store is the same thing as controlling where you can buy apps for an entire range of physical devices? Are you high?
Are you really that obtuse? They decide what games they will sell and under what terms.
That is EXACTLY what a store does.Walmart does this. 7-11 does this. What you are describing is a "store".
That's why they can make their own console, because gamers have bought into their platform.
They could make SteamOS or SteamBox or whatever it is regardless of steam. GoG could make one too if they wanted. Hell, as it stands most games Valve carries are windows games, and that's not going to change anytime soon. At worst, steambox is about as evil as walmart deciding to add car dealerships and selling walmart cars, so you can now drive your walmart purchases home in a walmart car, and they'll have automatic parking lots to automatically park your walmart cars when you pull up or something. Of course, you can still use the cars to go to other places that aren't walmart, and even carry purchases around that you made at other stores. Likewise buying a steambox doesn't lock you into steam and out of other stores at all.
Uh huh, and you're going to make the same argument that Valve shouldn't be able to charge 30% on their "Steam Machines"?
I already said Xbox etc was just as bad as Apple. Steam's Steam OS so far however is just a tweaked linux distro... you have access to the desktop, to the command line, and you can install on it whatever you like including using games that were not acquired from valve through steam.
Sure its POSSIBLE valve goes down the 'evil' path at some point, but the reason they are dominant right now is because they haven't. And if they do, there are other stores ready to take up torch and cater to PC hardware gamers. But comparing what Valve migh
If others need to turn it Off and others to turn it On, then it is broken as it can't exist.
Or it could prompt you the first time it loads to select a preference. Just saying. I don't think is the best solution, but the dilemma is easily resolved without having an initial default state.
I prefer the default being disabled.
I don't care what the default is to be honest; as long as it respects my choice once i've made it. Removing the option entirely is the problem.
No, it's the similarities that count. Glad we have that settled.
Monopolostic vs non-monopolistic is the bit that counts.
The walled garden is also very much about entering.
What does that even mean? Valve's not a walled garden. Its just a garden. Or more accurately its just a store.
Apple wants their cut, Valve wants their cut.
And I guess Valve should count itself lucky that Microsoft hasn't neutered them by taking 30% of all valves sales... you know... for "access" to windows users?
Oh wait... that *IS* Valves great fear... and the reason why they flipped out over the windows 8 app store, and its part of the impetus for steambox OS.
But it shouldn't be their fear. Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to charge 30% for everything anyone does with the OS. That ought to be illegal.
You're just hypocritical in your stance because you're part of Valve's herd, so much so that it bothers you that you can't be part of the Valve herd on an Apple farm.
Give it a rest.
I'm bothered that multiplatform games I buy on humblebundle don't (and can't) come with the ios version because of Apple.
I'm bothered that amazon can't sell comic books through its reader app.
I think its ridiculous that I can't buy steam games from the steam app. And equally ridiculous that I can't buy ios games from the steam store both because of apple.
But 'valve herd'? Hardly, I buy from GoG first. And if GoG had an ios "community" app (since apple won't let them run a store) I'd have mentioned that instead of Valve's. If I could buy games from GoG and run them on my ios devices in addition to mac, pc, (and soon linux) I'd be even happier, but that won't happen either because of apple.
Which makes it a hypocritical choice to use as your poster boy for a degraded app on Apple's app store.
Its the differences that count here.
Build a walled garden and force 30% of revenue to get in.
With Steam its just a garden. There is no wall. You can leave the garden.
The cognitive dissonance is strong within this one...
No. Its just you have particularly thick skull.
There are alternatives to Valve, and there are alternatives to Apple.
Only if you put your head up your ass and pretend that someone owning a PC and deciding to shop at GoG.com by just going there instead of instead of Steam that day represents the same class as "having alternatives" as someone owning an ipad and deciding to shop at at another store by buying a whole new device first.
I see a pretty massive difference there.
The difference between "monopoloy control" over access to millions of customers vs "not monopoly control".
That Valve runs on a PC doesn't change the reality that they have become a platform to themselves,
Nor does it change the reality that the majority of the games on steam are available for the PC elsewhere too. Steam may be dominant but it is far from monopoly.
and game companies have to make painful decisions because Valve has carved out such a strong marketplace,
Business is a series of painful decisions.
This is about bunch of users that only have one store, and nobody is allowed to sell direct or open a new store.
Its not right when Apple does it. (ios), and its not right when microsoft does it (xbox, windows RT).
But steam, whether you like it or hate it isn't the only store that can sell games for PCs, Macs, or Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
If you drink beer from the bottle then you need to stop using words like 'pageantry'.
Some beers I'd agree with that :)
But on a hot day at a BBQ I enjoy a drinking a Corona with a lime wedge straight from the bottle.
Are you a cork guy as well? You do know that screw caps are far superior closures for wine, don't you
I prefer corks. Because I enjoy opening wine bottles with corks. I can't tell the difference in the wine unless its actually spoiled. I know screw caps are better seals but its not as much fun.
(as cans are over bottles for beer,
And I prefer bottles too. Because i like the sensation of a cold bottle on my lips more than a cold can.
Just as I prefer like drinking anything from a glass or mug over drinking it from a plastic or paper or metal cup (whether its water, juice, milk, tea, or coffee...)
I would LOVE to see wine in cans
I'm sure that'd be fine in terms of taste as I'd still drink it out of a glass.
Dining is very much about the taste, but you shouldn't discount the value in the pageantry, theater, and traditions of the experience. They may not affect the taste, but they are still part of the whole experience.
Possibly. Friendly fire was already pointed out by someone else. And I think friendly fire would very likely have counted towards this total.
But its not as clear to me whether deliberate suicides would have been included in the total or not. After all, if I count all the incidents where police were charged with assault its similarly not clear that it would include domestic spousal abuse incidents at home, off duty, not acting in anyway in the capacity of police officers. Maybe it would? Maybe it wouldn't... but you'd want some documentation one way or the way. Same goes here I think. Suicides are quite different than being shot to death in the line of duty or even off duty.
So find a better breakdown or documentation of the numbers if you can to establish just what was counted and how, or just halve it -- that's what the other poster did. It doesn't really change the argument significantly in the end whether its 51, or 26.
Doesn't Windows use a swap file, no matter how much memory you have? That could conceivably see any amount of traffick per day.
Far less than you'd think in nearly all circumstances.
And its not like the computer writes to the same physical SSD sectors over and over again on an SSD, even if its over-writing data in the same page file. The wear leveling abstraction between file system and physical disk ensure that writes take place on least used sectors and then the file system is told the file is now using the new sectors and the old ones are marked free.
In other words if you have a 4Kb file that you just overwrite continually, each write will still be on a new physical sector instead of writing on the same sector repeatedly.
Can you clarify that ... are you saying that the battery actually cannot be replaced even by a phone service center?
I've read the M8 reviews, and i always got the sense that it was as 'non-removable as an iphone battery' in that you weren't going to carry around batteries and swap them at will, but if the battery died or degraded to where it only held a nominal charge you could take it somewhere and have it replaced with a new one.
We seem to be using different definitions of intrinsic value.
Your use seem to be based on the specialized jargon definition used in finance applied to stocks etc?
I am using the definition of intrinsic from philosophy and economic theory, and which is the usual use in common english.
As in the first definition in the dictionary of intrinsic is:
"belonging to a thing by its very nature"
By this definition stocks have little intrinsic value. As electronic records in a database somewhere they have absolutely none. As printed share certificates they burn well and can be used as toilet paper.
A gold watch that tells time really well on the other hand can tell time really well. Its also gold, which is a conductor.
men with guns can take those things, were it not for the rule of law protecting property rights.
a) So? That has no bearing on intrinsic value.
b) That's a gross oversimplification. Men with guns can take things despite the rule of law (we call them theives, robbers, pirates...) and there are plenty of ways to stop men with guns from taking your stuff without resorting "rule of law" from having your own guns to simply staying out of range.
None is more or less intrinsic simply because ownership is a matter of custom
Intrinisc value has nothing to do with ownership. Instrinsc value "belongs to the nature of the thing". The watch tells really good time regardless of who owns it or even if its shared or nobody owns it at all. The stocks on the other hand are a worthless idea without convention and custom and the force of law to give them value. That is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic in a nutshell.
Balancing that would be that there are multiple cases of cops shooting each other
Good point.
But I figure that 5-10% is a good percentage, and it's not that big of a range.
That's fair.
Do you have some citation on the reliability figure? I thought the false-negative* was higher.
There are a number of competing systems. I don't know. I guess the point is that if we set a low target like 1:1000 (99.9%) its amost surely a net positive. If we set a target like 1:5000 (99.98%) its beyond clear reproach that its a net positive. If the guns are currently only 99% reliable... or something absurdly terrible like that then I agree they aren't ready for primetime -- but that's not an indictment of the idea of smart guns, merely the current status of the implementation.
Personally, I looked at the cost - the system seems to cost $1k over a non-smart gun.
And that's another good point. Clearly the cost needs to come down for it to be practical. But the anti-smart-gun crowd tends to frame their objection around how its automatically going lead to more innocent deaths. I'm aiming to shred that argument, but I have no issue conceding that price is valid concern.
If you figure the average police firearm lasts 20 years, that's $50M/year to save 5-10 lives.
The above said, that seems surprisingly reasonable to be honest. 50 million year divided over how many police officers? Google is suggesting that its around 780,000. That's $64 per year per officer to save at least 5-10 lives year.* I don't know if that is 'high' or not relative to other measures that are in place relative their expense but its not as bad I thought it would be.
* That only considers officer deaths. How many civilians are shot with stolen police weapons? How many of those would be eliminated with a smart system? In some cases the thief would and could defeat the system... but surely in some cases not.
I'd also like to wind out by saying one concern i have about this particular smart gun tech highlighted in the TFA is that it appears to be a wireless link between wristband and weapon -- and I'm concerned about the ability for it to be jammed. If it can be effectively jammed then its not suitable at all for the police. (Although it may still be entirely reasonable for a hobby weapon or hunting weapon.)
However, without the force of law to back such property ownership, we're left only with what we have the weapons to protect.
My only argument was the "stocks" have no intrinsic value.
Thus the bunker-builders talking about ammunition-based currency.
Ammunition has intrinic value,and would be valuable in a post-civilization universe, but ammo itself makes a poor currency. It doesn't really handle well. Would you really want to load your gun to defend your bunker with ammo that spent the last several months (years?) being passed around from person to person, dropped in the mud, wiped off, counted and recounted, and moved from pocket to pocket? Or would you want pristine stuff new out of a box?
Ammo would be valuable in a barter system economy to be sure... but so would chickens and gasoline. But none of these is good as a currency.
Pedantically: stocks are merely a convention to represent fractional joint ownership of the means of production.
Share certificates have as much intrinsic value as a $20 bill: substandard toilet paper. ;)
Flying between buildings in NYC is "airspace shared with interstate flights?" Uh, OK.
So full size manned helicopters flying from building to building in New York are exempt from FAA oversight?
Uh. OK.
Phones are slowing as well, Short of me breaking it or the battery dying, I can easily see my HTC ONE M8 lasting 4 years. It's probably why HTC made sure the battery was not replaceable in the phone... to ensure it will stop working.
It cost me about the same to pay someone to replace the battery in my old iphone 3GS for my daughter to use as I paid for a replacement battery for my old Motorola RAZR.
The battery my not be "swappable", but it IS "replaceable".
Frankly that sounds like the creationist argument for "equal time" in the science classroom.
Would you prefer classroom time allocated according to whoever had the most money to spend on setting the curriculum instead? Nutrition 101 brought to you by the High Fructose Corn Syrup Consortium, Math? What math, it's been replaced by Harry Potter Appreciation class. ;)
Trouble is, when you set everybody at the same volume, you get a crap ton of noise and garbage.
I agree the average political viewpoint is worthless. But the wealthiest persons political viewpoint is no more likely to be worthwhile than anyone elses.
Better for ideas that resonate with the people to percolate to the top organically rather than just get shouted into us by the richest.
Money is speech when it is used to promote a political view.
No. Money just buys you a bigger louder megaphone.
The trouble is, with enough money, your megaphone can be so loud it can drown out everything else.
However, a well-maintained modern handgun firing factory ammunition is unlikely to fail
So assuming you maintain it, which you already claimed you do, you should be just fine as it will continue to be unlikely to fail.
What we're talking about here is an additional failure mode
How is the potential of getting shot with your own gun not also a "failure mode"? Where you simply see "additional failure mode", I see tradeoffs plain as day.
If for some reason you need to shoot with your off hand and cannot get your strong-side wrist in range of the gun, you'll be unable to shoot.
If for some reason the person you wish to shoot wrestles the gun away from you, he'll be unable to shoot you with it. Tradeoff.
Police will absolutely refuse to use these,
Lets look at some actual numbers. According to the Washington Post
From 2000 to 2010
511 police officers were killed by guns.
----
170 the source of the gun is not known / gun not recovered
107 of those were by guns legally acquired by the killer
77 were from stolen guns
51 were killed with their own weapon or another officers weapon (presumably obtained during the incident)
46 obtained from relatives or friends who had them legally
41 obtained through illegal street sale
16 obtained through 'staw buyer' (bought legally by someone for someone else prohibted to own a gun)
3 purchased illegally at gun shows or private sellers
So a full 10% of police deaths by firearm were by their own guns. This system would have saved at minimum 51 police officers lives. Its plausible that some percentage of the stolen and other illegally obtained guns would also have been prevented; but we'll set that aside and just consider police officers being shot with their own firearm for now.
So the question before us then is how many times would a smart system have to fail to fire before it caused more deaths than it saved?
The number of bullets fired by Officers in New York City was 431 in 2001, and 540 in in 2006. (And peaked quite a bit higher in the 90s, but I'm trying to keep the data as current as possible.) Now Given NYC is 1/40th the US population we can make a very gross extrapolation to the entire country to 17,000 - 21,000 shots year. Lets call it 200,000 rounds over the same decade. (And I think that's crazy high over estimate); and it includes everything from putting down a dog to warning shots to that time LAPD shot a single 19 year old guy 90 times after he threatened them with a cell phone. (Yes he was trying to provoke them and he deserved to get shot... but really 90 rounds fired at what turned out to be an unarmed man?)
Anyway based on those numbers a smart gun system then would have to fail >50 times in 200,000 rounds (or 1 round out of 4000) and EVERY single failure would have to be a life or death situation where failing to fire leads to the officers death, which is so utterly ludicrous its not even really worth considering... but lets consider it anyway.
1:4000 failures is 99.975% functional.
That's how reliable the system has to be to be an improvement, even under the most RIDICULOUS assumption that every single failure would lead to a cop being killed. But even 99.975% reliable is a very low bar to reach.
Not only will the system clearly be more reliable than that, and even when it does fail most of the time it won't get anyone killed.
If it were to be even 99.99% reliable, and we assume that even 1 time in 10 the gun not firing is fatal for the police officer, then this system would have saved 51 officers, and resulted in 2 deaths. /. is a place for science and math. And the math is pretty clear. The system will save far more lives than it costs. And your objection is therefore knee jerk hysterics.
I look forward to a well reasoned, well researched, well articulated counter argument. (Or just call me a liberal tard who wants to take all yer guns away...whatever works for you).
Except users never had to buy iDevice in the first place, which makes your Walmart analogy inept.
People never have to move to New York either. The walmart analogy seems reasonable to me.
Apple's policy regarding apps is well-known.
Not really. Or perhaps its known but not well understood.
People are on the gog and steam forums asking for ios shopping apps, with no conception of why it will not happen despite owning an idevice and thinking they understand the policy.
Or people will ask on humblebundle.com for future mobile bundles to include the ios version of the game alongside the pc, mac, linux, and android version; again not realizing that humblebundle simply cannot do this.
People understand they can't just go willy nilly downloading apps for ios... but they are largely not aware of the full implications of how locked in they are.
Sure, Apple has more tightfisted control.
Thank you.
But both Valve and Apple are gatekeepers to a large userbase, and they both take 30%.
That's fair. But the difference in how tightfisted the control is can't be just brushed aside. It affects the real impact of the policies.
. That was the basic principle being argued over initially before this topic became faceted into just how Evil(TM) Apple really is. That one has control over a device and one is just a dominant "store" (that also hosts achievements, "cloud" saves, and matchmaking) for PC gaming doesn't make that principle go away.
Even if the policies in the two stores are the same. the freedom to step outside the store and use a different one at-will with the same device changes the real world impact of the policies inside the store immensely.
I think we've exhausted this topic, so last reply for me.
Agreed. I don't think there is much new left to argue.
, wouldn't it make more sense to simply raise your prices until demand falls to meet supply?
Until he only ever cooks for rich people? Maybe that's not what he wants to do.
Or, alternatively, add some space for more tables, so supply rises to meet demand
http://frankunderground.com/
"At FRANK, youâ(TM)ll be seated around our massive communal table of century-old reclaimed wood, surrounded by new friends who share your love for fresh, local food and the fellowship and storytelling that naturally spring from the dinner party setting. "
" FRANK generally takes place within 10 minutes of downtown Dallas (normally accessible by public transit) at a private home in a comfortable, casual, informal space."
Adding more tables would
a) defeat the dinner party gimmick.
b) probably not fit in the average private home
What do you think of replacing the stereotypical front yard with some type of garden and some home raising of animals (chickens come to mind)?
I seem to recall reading that a potential drawback of this would be the difficulty in containing the spread disease. Thousands of 'farms' just a few 10s of feet from the next one over, each managed by a total amateur during evenings and weekends who already has a real day job.
Writing this I think the article I specifically read was in reference to running bee hives, but it seems that the issues would apply here as well.
What do you do if your neighbors chickens start getting sick...and they aren't swift enough to address the problem... hell even if they are swift its probably too late.
I'm nowhere near a farmer,
Exactly. To turn this into an IT analogy it would be like proposing each home run their own mail servers. In theory this would be good for a lot of reasons... but most people aren't server admins; and dealing with spam, viruses, server updates, relay issues, security, etc, etc is just setting things up to fail. A chicken coop in every front yard is a biological (biohazard) equivalent.
It would often get flooded like a status LED blinking so fast it looks always on.
After you watch those logs flood by for a while, sure you don't keep up, and read every line, but you can extract information just in the way it flows or isn't flowing. And when it pauses and you are waiting for something its usually something interesting, because you wern't expecting it to pause just then.
"If Android tablet sales are so far ahead, why are Android tablet use figures so far behind?"
Methodology? I mean, I read the article you linked to:
"For the hourly usage figures, Chitika Insights sampled tens of millions of U.S. and Canadian tablet online ad impressions running through the Chitika Ad Network."
My android is running firefox with adblock...and honestly even then i don't use it much for browsing the web. I spend most of my time in apps.
No it wasn't
I had to think about it, but yeah it was. Crystal Skull was stupid as rocks and a stain on the franchise.
But all 3 star wars prequels were much worse.
Crystal Skull would have been worse only if one of the aliens had been Indy's mom, and indy's kid was half alien and the key to letting the aliens go home, using the force to fly a bicycle. Oh and Indy's kid would have married Marion and had a baby jedi.
With all respect, it didn't really have other uses anymore,
Thats sort of buying a van, and then having the dealer gradually remove all the doors and windows from a van and then declaring that you don't need all that cargo space either because it doesn't have any uses since you can't get to it, and then removing the removing the space too leaving you with a nice little 2 seater smart car.
But the whole reason I bought this car in the first place is because I wanted a VAN. Doors, windows, cargo space.
There are a LOT of things you could do with a status bar. You could display status... like WHAT THE FUCK IS THE BROWSER IS DOING RIGHT NOW now aka "STATUS"? I mean sure there is a spinning green circle in the tab icon space and that's all we get for feedback?
Download speed, how many items are in the download manager queue, dns look ups, time outs, server errors, do I have internet access, page validation status, plugins starting up, encryption characteristics, extensions / addon messages, what is it doing with cookies... I can imagine more things to do with the status bar then will FIT in 5 status bars. Do I want or need all of those all the time? Hell no... but I'm using firefox because I want more advanced feedback than a spinning circle.
Except you haven't shown Apple to be a monopoly. You don't have to buy an iPhone to get smartphone service. You don't have to buy an iPad to get a tablet computer.
Complete control over what people do with their idevice is monopolistic. If walmart was the only store you were allowed to shop at if you lived in New York then walmart has a monopoly there. The fact that you don't have to live in New York, and can shop somewhere else if you first moved to a new city doesn't change that fact. Likewise, being able to abandon your idevice and buy a whole new device doesn't change the fact that Apple's practice of control over idevices is monopolistic.
They have a "monopoly" on the users that bought their iDevice, just like Valve does on users who only buy games through Steam.
That is a ridiculous comparison. Those two aren't just like eachother at all. What do steam and apple have control over?
Steam Answer: The contents of your steam account and the steam store. That's it.
Apple Answer: The contents of your apple account and the apple app store. AND you are prevented from obtaining software for your idevice anywhere else. AND you are prevented from using software you acquire on non-idevices.
What do I have to do if I'm using $provider$ and now want to buy a program somewhere else for my $device that I own$?
Steam Answer: Buy a program from another store that supports $device that you own$. There are MANY to choose from. Regardless of what steam supported device you currently have. You are free to shop elsewhere for it.
Apple Answer: First buy another device. Now you can visit another store. Note that no matter what device you buy, you will not be able to use any of your apple app store purchases on it.
That, my dense friend, is the difference between apple's WALLED garden and valves garden. Steam only controls the stuff in the store. Apple controls the stuff in its store, but also prevents you from using another store. (And NO, being able to use another store by buying an entirely new device doesn't change that fact.)
So what's your argument? That having control over what is on your steam account inside the steam store is the same thing as controlling where you can buy apps for an entire range of physical devices? Are you high?
Are you really that obtuse? They decide what games they will sell and under what terms.
That is EXACTLY what a store does.Walmart does this. 7-11 does this. What you are describing is a "store".
That's why they can make their own console, because gamers have bought into their platform.
They could make SteamOS or SteamBox or whatever it is regardless of steam. GoG could make one too if they wanted. Hell, as it stands most games Valve carries are windows games, and that's not going to change anytime soon. At worst, steambox is about as evil as walmart deciding to add car dealerships and selling walmart cars, so you can now drive your walmart purchases home in a walmart car, and they'll have automatic parking lots to automatically park your walmart cars when you pull up or something. Of course, you can still use the cars to go to other places that aren't walmart, and even carry purchases around that you made at other stores. Likewise buying a steambox doesn't lock you into steam and out of other stores at all.
Uh huh, and you're going to make the same argument that Valve shouldn't be able to charge 30% on their "Steam Machines"?
I already said Xbox etc was just as bad as Apple. Steam's Steam OS so far however is just a tweaked linux distro... you have access to the desktop, to the command line, and you can install on it whatever you like including using games that were not acquired from valve through steam.
Sure its POSSIBLE valve goes down the 'evil' path at some point, but the reason they are dominant right now is because they haven't. And if they do, there are other stores ready to take up torch and cater to PC hardware gamers. But comparing what Valve migh
If others need to turn it Off and others to turn it On, then it is broken as it can't exist.
Or it could prompt you the first time it loads to select a preference. Just saying. I don't think is the best solution, but the dilemma is easily resolved without having an initial default state.
I prefer the default being disabled.
I don't care what the default is to be honest; as long as it respects my choice once i've made it. Removing the option entirely is the problem.
No, it's the similarities that count. Glad we have that settled.
Monopolostic vs non-monopolistic is the bit that counts.
The walled garden is also very much about entering.
What does that even mean? Valve's not a walled garden. Its just a garden. Or more accurately its just a store.
Apple wants their cut, Valve wants their cut.
And I guess Valve should count itself lucky that Microsoft hasn't neutered them by taking 30% of all valves sales... you know... for "access" to windows users?
Oh wait... that *IS* Valves great fear... and the reason why they flipped out over the windows 8 app store, and its part of the impetus for steambox OS.
But it shouldn't be their fear. Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to charge 30% for everything anyone does with the OS. That ought to be illegal.
You're just hypocritical in your stance because you're part of Valve's herd, so much so that it bothers you that you can't be part of the Valve herd on an Apple farm.
Give it a rest.
I'm bothered that multiplatform games I buy on humblebundle don't (and can't) come with the ios version because of Apple.
I'm bothered that amazon can't sell comic books through its reader app.
I think its ridiculous that I can't buy steam games from the steam app. And equally ridiculous that I can't buy ios games from the steam store both because of apple.
But 'valve herd'? Hardly, I buy from GoG first. And if GoG had an ios "community" app (since apple won't let them run a store) I'd have mentioned that instead of Valve's. If I could buy games from GoG and run them on my ios devices in addition to mac, pc, (and soon linux) I'd be even happier, but that won't happen either because of apple.
Which makes it a hypocritical choice to use as your poster boy for a degraded app on Apple's app store.
Its the differences that count here.
Build a walled garden and force 30% of revenue to get in.
With Steam its just a garden. There is no wall. You can leave the garden.
The cognitive dissonance is strong within this one...
No. Its just you have particularly thick skull.
There are alternatives to Valve, and there are alternatives to Apple.
Only if you put your head up your ass and pretend that someone owning a PC and deciding to shop at GoG.com by just going there instead of instead of Steam that day represents the same class as "having alternatives" as someone owning an ipad and deciding to shop at at another store by buying a whole new device first.
I see a pretty massive difference there.
The difference between "monopoloy control" over access to millions of customers vs "not monopoly control".
That Valve runs on a PC doesn't change the reality that they have become a platform to themselves,
Nor does it change the reality that the majority of the games on steam are available for the PC elsewhere too. Steam may be dominant but it is far from monopoly.
and game companies have to make painful decisions because Valve has carved out such a strong marketplace,
Business is a series of painful decisions.
This is about bunch of users that only have one store, and nobody is allowed to sell direct or open a new store.
Its not right when Apple does it. (ios), and its not right when microsoft does it (xbox, windows RT).
But steam, whether you like it or hate it isn't the only store that can sell games for PCs, Macs, or Linux.